Painfully earnest...

The humor-challenged otaku at Public Domain Super Heroes didn't like my suggestion for a more PC name for Mark Twain's "Injun Joe".

Tab Clearing...

• The hit dog yelps?


• He greatly advanced the state of pistolcraft. He also said some dumb things.


• The end of the GOP?

Just enough hotter, apparently.

So today was the date with the chronograph for the TulAmmo and PPU full metal jacket stuff. How much hotter does a round have to be than the Blazer Brass 115gr to ensure reliable functioning in this C9-A1? If you'll remember, the CCI load averaged 1097fps for a string of ten rounds, with the slowest being a decidedly subsonic 1055.

First, the Prvi Partizan...

PPU 124gr FMJ
LO: 1031
HI: 1090
AV: 1067
ES: 58.38
SD: 16.03

Slower than the Blazer Brass, but not by much, and with a heavier bullet, these rounds functioned the weapon just dandily.

And then the TulAmmo...

TulAmmo 115gr FMJ
LO: 1116
HI: 1201
AV: 1163
ES: 85.42
SD: 24.75

So, a pretty wide velocity spread, but the slowest was as fast as the fastest Blazer Brass, and the fastest TulAmmo round was a good bit faster than that.

It wasn't all sunshine and buttercups, though...
 

Russian primers are notoriously harder than woodpecker lips and striker-fired guns sometimes have issues popping them reliably. Round number 42 of the day (#472 of the test) didn't go off on the first time around, but when reloaded into the mag and cycled into the chamber again, it ignited normally. That goes against the gun, then.

This makes 530 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with two failures-to-fire (#8, #472), three failures to extract (#234, #266, #276), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,470 rounds left to go.
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Rain, rain, go away...

Hopefully the rains will stop long enough to clear out the raised beds in the front and back yards this week. Flowers would be nice, and maybe some herbs and a pepper plant or two. The frost warning yesterday morning was jarring. Good thing we didn't have any tomato starts going.
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Bigger booms are better booms...

So I ordered some ammo that I suspected would be warmer than 115gr Blazer Brass to see if that had any effect on reliability. Judging from the ejection patterns, I wasn't wrong about the TulAmmo and PPU being hotter than the CCI plinking loading.

Over the hundred rounds, there were no malfunctions of any type to report.

This makes 430 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with one failure-to-fire (#8), three failures to extract (#234, #266, #276), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,570 rounds left to go.
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A training deal for a good cause...

HEBREW HOGGER 2016:  Training and Pork-Raiser

WHEN?   JULY 31, 2016  8AM to 5PM.  Registration begins at 7:30AM!

WHERE?  4607 Sloan Rd, Nashville, TN 37209

WHY?  This is a tactical training conference to raise funds to help save the Oinkin’ Acres Farmstead, owned by US Army veteran, medic, Tactical Response Instructor, Paul-E-Palooza Cadre Member and Legendary Hebrew Hogger, Eli Miller.  In early 2016, Eli was involved in a lawful self-defense situation and his legal defense has caused enormous financial distress. All funds raised will go to saving the Farmstead.  In addition to the training, Eli will have available for purchase a variety of his prize-winning, heirloom pork products!  Support the Farmstead in the most delicious, bacon-y way possible.

WHO WILL BE PRESENTING?

Dr. Sherman A. House (The People’s Dentist and Revolver Science)

Dr. William Aprill (Aprill Risk Consulting)

Claude Werner (The Tactical Professor)

Mark Luell (Growing Up Guns)

Dana McLendon  (McLendon & Milligan, Attorneys at Law)

James Yeager (Tactical Response)

Paul Sharp (Sharp Defense)

WHAT?  Topics covered will include self preservation, criminal psychology, emergency medical skills, edged weapons, security and more.

COST? $100  LIMITED SEATS AVAILABLE, SO REGISTER NOW

HOW?  Email Conference Administrators therealdoctorhouse0021@gmail.com for registration information, and liability release waiver.

PLEASE SHARE THIS ON YOUR BLOG, FACEBOOK PAGE, INSTAGRAM, AND TWITTER PAGES.  THANK YOU!

$100 for that training lineup is a steal, and the proceeds go to a good cause.
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It's a metaphor for the rest of the world.

There's a lot of running around and emoting while producing very little (in the way of points) and constantly wondering why America doesn't care more.

If it's Sunday, it's Meet The Press...unless those taint-snorting pretentious Euro wannabes at 30 Rock think I'd rather be watching Limies run around in short pants than yell at senators like grownups do on Sunday mornings.

Thanks NBC, you have thoroughly ganked my plans for a relaxing Sunday morning in bed. I guess I'll go get donuts and maybe go do some shooting at Indy Arms Co.
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Super Mega Chrono Nerd Post

Six different .357SIG loads from Lucky Gunner had their date with the chronograph yesterday. The MCF&G range was still swampy in places, but there were more dry spots than wet ones in the bays. You wanted to watch where you walked in sneakers, though.

First, the full metal jacket practice ammo from the major domestic manufacturers:

Remington 125gr MC
LO: 1338
HI: 1369
AV: 1355
ES: 30.73
SD: 8.88

American Eagle 125gr FMJ
LO: 1326
HI: 1361
AV: 1344
ES: 35.66
SD: 12.80

Winchester 125gr FMJ
LO: 1335
HI: 1358
AV: 1349
ES: 22.62
SD: 7.14

As you can see, they're as alike as three peas in a pod, ballistics-wise, and all of them steamier by a hundred feet per second than the Speer Lawman FMJ I tested a week or so ago. Given the extra bright muzzle flash, I would have supposed the Remington to be noticeably faster than the others, but it was not to be.

I have to note that the consistency displayed by all three loadings bordered on freakish, with the Remington being especially a surprise. I may have to run another string from that lot number just because...

For defense ammo, I tried two pretty conventional .357SIG loadings from Winchester and Federal, and a wild card from Hornady. Remember that the .357SIG is, in design intention at least, a one-trick pony: It's intended to emulate the 125gr .357 Magnum rounds that had such a mythical rep for "stopping power" in law enforcement circles in the Eighties and Nineties. Putting Hornady's deep-penetrating 147gr bullet, normally operating at subsonic velocities from a 9mm pistol, atop the bottlenecked .357SIG case is unusual.

Hornady 147gr XTP
LO: 1169
HI: 1203
AV: 1188
ES: 34.18
SD: 11.78

Winchester Elite 125gr PDX1
LO: 1326
HI: 1369
AV: 1346
ES: 42.90
SD: 14.00

Federal Tactical 125gr HST
LO: 1339
HI: 1380
AV: 1356
ES: 40.62
SD: 13.63

As you can see, the XTP is well and truly supersonic when launched from the 4" Glock 32 and should probably come close to matching the claimed box-flap velocity of 1225fps out of a 4.5" Glock 31 barrel. What this does to terminal performance awaits the arrival of some jello to discover.

Because I can't math so good, after firing the sixty rounds for the chronograph strings, I finished the remaining forty rounds in the Remington box and then fired a dozen more rounds of Winchester, giving me a total of 112 rounds for the morning instead of the 102 I'd meant to fire. There were no malfunctions of any type to report.

That makes 680 total rounds fired since the firearm was last cleaned or lubricated, with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and three failures to feed (#221, #224, #282). 1,320 rounds left to go.
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pfffft!

Another hundred rounds of .357SIG from Lucky Gunner at the range yesterday, Federal American Eagle 125gr FMJ and Remington 125gr FMJ.

I hadn't yet tried the American Eagle, and I was interested to see how the inexpensive (relatively, at least) target ammo from the company that invented .357 SIG fared.

Quite well, as it turned out. There was only one jarring note to the range trip, and it came from the Remington stuff...

A primer loaded sideways that I somehow missed while loading mags went "pfffft!" when I pulled the trigger. Having flashbacks to godawful Turkish surplus 8mm Mauser, I instinctively benched the pistol and stepped into the next bay to start "One Mississippi, two Mississippi..." before I realized what must have happened and cleared the pistol. This was round #62 of the day.

As you can see, the Federal was largely kept in a 2" circle at seven yards, and without a terrible amount of effort. The Remington has holes all over the place, some of which were as a result of me trying to video the muzzle flash while shooting strong-hand-only (failed) and some of which were because I was tired and my hands were sweaty and my glasses were fogging and just whatever sort of excuse you want to blame.

That makes 568 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and three failures to feed (#221, #224, #282). 1,432 rounds left to go.
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When The Bubble Pops

Good post from Kevin at Misfires & Light Strikes:

"We’re in the midst of a huge gun-buying bubble right now, and have been for almost eight years. All bubbles burst. All of them, ever since the days of the Dutch buying tulips. What happens when the gun market cools off?"

Go read the whole thing.
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Automotif CXXV...

A sign that spring is well and truly underway here in SoBro: An '83-'85-vintage Series 3 Alfa Romeo Spider with the top dropped.
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Stop me before I pun again...

If Trump is elected I hope some WH staffer someday writes a scathing Barbara Olson-esque tell-all and calls it "Hell Toupee".

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 13, 2016

Round #62 today...

That was interesting. Sideways primer lit off, round didn't. #357sig #remington #oops

A photo posted by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 12, 2016 at 9:08am PDT

Care Less

So, aspirin is derived from willow bark, a natural substance whose analgesic properties have been known for a long time, with some of the earliest recorded recommendations for its use coming from Hippocrates (or that chick in Clan of the Cave Bear, but she's fictional and doesn't count.)

But aspirin is also an anticoagulant and some folks are allergic to it and too much can cause ulcers and may contribute to kids' brains swelling up and stuff, and so acetaminophen was invented. Instead of those side effects, it just destroys your liver if you take too much over too short of a time or, apparently according to a recent study, destroys your ability to give a damn about the problems of others.

Liver-damaged zombie or hemophiliac ulcer patient in convulsions*... That'll put you right off reading the warning labels more, won't it?


*I am way exaggerating this for the yuks. Chill. Although I prefer aspirin to Tylenol myself.
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Still going...

A hundred rounds of .357SIG from Lucky Gunner came along to the range yesterday: fifty Winchester 125gr FMJ and fifty Remington 125gr FMJ.

Even on the well-lit indoor range, the Remington stuff made pretty epic fireballs from the Glock 32's four-inch barrel.

All one hundred rounds went off without a hitch, with no malfunctions of any type to report.

That makes 469 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and three failures to feed (#221, #224, #282). 1,531 rounds left to go.
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The Cranio Ocular Whatsis...

"You're trying to disrupt his motor functions, not his ability to solve differential equations or appreciate poetry! pic.twitter.com/AIWfY7bnzb

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 11, 2016

I wonder why?

"Nobody makes a quality concealment holster for my gun!"

This should be a clue.

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 11, 2016

#pewpewlife

Who's a big @luckygunner fan? This blogger! Time to go make the pew pews. #pewpewlife #357sig #luckygunner

A photo posted by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 11, 2016 at 6:43am PDT

Trigger Warning

So yesterday morning I dropped the ZEV Fulcrum Ultimate kit in the Robar Glock 17. This replaced the  ZEV connector/NY1 spring combination, dropping the trigger pull from a nominal seven pounds to four and a half.

Gone was most of the weight on the takeup. Gone, also, was the abrupt "wall" in the trigger pull before the break.

Given that I have largely shed myself of the bad habit of "riding the reset" and instead let the trigger reset and prep it again during recoil so that I'm ready to break my next shot as the sights settle, the lack of the vigorous reset shouldn't be a handicap.

The problem is that this particular trigger setup makes very little tactile distinction between "prep" and "bang", as evinced by the shot that grazed the target's shoulder, caused by the shot breaking before the sights had dropped back to the center of the target.

While I'll put more time in with this trigger in the 17 before moving it to a purely fun gun like my Glock 20, I'll likely be going back to the light connector/NY1 spring combination, and for reasons other than just trigger pull characteristics.

A gunsmith I know, Bob Howard back in Knoxville, once commented while looking into a Glock's guts "I can't get over the fact that these things are filled with toaster parts." And they are. Little coil springs and sheet metal stampings comprise the working bits of a Glock. The basic trigger return spring is a coil spring with a hook on each end that operates in tension: You pull the trigger, the spring stretches, the gun fires, and the spring contracts, resetting the trigger.

As anyone who has maintained a fleet of Glocks, whether for a police department or rental counter, can tell you, the trigger return spring is probably the most frequently broken part on a Glock. When it fails, you can keep firing the gun, but you have to push the trigger forward after each shot. The NY1 trigger spring, on the other hand, is a V-shaped piece of olive green plastic with a coil spring nestled between the two arms of the V. It works in compression and, while I'm sure that they can break, I've never seen a broken one with my own two eyes.

The problem is that with the standard connector, the NY1 spring gives a trigger pull in the neighborhood of nine or ten pounds. When used with a factory Glock competition connector (or an aftermarket equivalent) you get a seven-ish pound pull with an even takeup that leads to a rolling break. Imagine a DA revolver trigger with only half an inch of travel.

That's the setup I've been using on my guns (except my carry gun, which is stock at the moment, mostly because I haven't gotten around to changing it. It shoots fine, though, so I'm in no hurry.)

WECSOG

Let's try a different trigger today... #glock #zevtech #robar #glock17 #glockworx

A photo posted by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 10, 2016 at 5:45am PDT

Installing the trigger assembly but leaving the factory striker spring and firing pin plunger drops the trigger weight from 7# to 4.5# according to my RCBS fish scale, versus the ZEV connector/NY1 spring combo that was in it before. The break is a little mushier and it doesn't fire off the reset as firmly as the NY1 spring does, but I'll have to wait until it stops raining to see what effect that latter effect has on the clock. It's indoor range time today, and I can't time my splits there.
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Spring ahead...

Monday morning I grabbed the Glock 32 and a Smith & Wesson 31 and headed to Indy Arms Co.

With me I had fifty rounds of Speer Lawman 125gr TMJ .357SIG and fifty rounds of Fiocchi 100gr lead wadcutters in .32 S&W Long.

I ran the target out to seven yards and commenced with the blastin'. The bottom right target is fifty rounds with the Glock. I was holding the top edge of the front sight blade flush with the bottom edge of the red circle. I need to let a couple other people try it to make sure it's not just me, but the gun's going to wind up with aftermarket sights anyway, so...

The top right and bottom left targets each represent three full cylinders, eighteen rounds, from the Model 31. The top left target was the remaining fourteen rounds in the box. All were fired double action. As you might expect, the DA trigger on a 1971-vintage Bangor Punta J-frame is not a joy to run. If that narrow serrated trigger has a pull weight under twelve pounds, I'll eat my hat.

That makes 369 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and three failures to feed (#221, #224, #282). 1,631 rounds left to go.

I've got to order in more ammo for the gun, and also I'm going to contact Brownell's and order some eleven-coil magazine springs on the advice of a friend who loves him some Glock 32s. We'll see if that cures the FTF issue.

Just for fun...

Smith & Wesson Model 31-1 #smithandwesson #thepewpewlife #wheelgun #fiocchi #revolver

A photo posted by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 9, 2016 at 8:42am PDT

It'd been way too long since I just took a fun revolver out for a spin. This 4" Model 31-1 is just your basic Bangor Punta era J-frame. Objectively, the trigger pull verges on awful, but most older factory J-frames do, if we're being honest with ourselves. Still, with the soft-shooting .32 wadcutters from Fiocchi, it was a hoot to shoot.
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Pixie Dust Bullets...

"The interior of a plane is a specific environment that isn't suitable for common ammunition. After a target is hit from a short distance, conventional bullets can cause catastrophic damage to the aircraft, or kill an innocent passenger.

To prevent that, the Czech researchers focused on developing projectiles that get deformed once hitting a target, significantly reducing the chance of passing through.

The result of testing in an underground lab is 9mm ammunition with a brass bullet, weighing about 5 grams (0.18 ounces). It leaves the gun at a speed over 500 meters (1,640 feet) per second, higher than the 350-400 meters per second that is common for this caliber, providing a sufficient wounding capability.

On impact, the bullet expands its surface, imparts all its kinetic energy into the body and remains in it.

"By developing this 9mm ammunition, we've reached its technical and ballistic limits," said Lt. Col. Ludek Jedlicka from the Department of Weapons and Ammunition at the Faculty of Military Technology."

A 79gr all-alloy expanding bullet. Such future. Much secret. Wow.
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Today In History: Black Friday Sale!

On this day in 1873 came Der Krach, as the Vienna stock market augured in, sending ripples across Europe which would eventually spread to the U.S., triggering a six-year-plus economic slump that would be referred to as "The Great Depression" until a greater one came along and they had to rename this one.

Central Europe and the U.S. were both in the midst of postwar booms, as there was construction and business growth a-go-go in newly unified Germany and re-unified America. Railroads were the dot-coms of the day, drawing speculative investments from people who probably should have been investing in next week's grocery bill rather than The Next Big Thing.

Predictably as the sunrise, the music stopped and there weren't enough chairs to go around and businesses failed. In the U.S., more than a hundred railroads went toes up over a few years and railway construction fell to less than a quarter of its previous pace. As can be imagined, that led to a lot of unemployed people, and the remaining employed ones went on strike against the low wages paid by the profit-strapped surviving railroads.

Things were bad enough that the Democrats, regarded as being on the wrong side of public opinion in the recent Civil War, retook the House of Representatives for the first time since that war.
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Magnum J

S&W 432PD .32 Magnum #smithandwesson #wheelgun #hornady #criticaldefense

A photo posted by Tamara Keel (@tamarakeel) on May 8, 2016 at 3:13pm PDT

Miscellaneous Glocking...

• Thanks to a reader, I've got a ZEV Fulcrum Ultimate trigger kit (well, most of one) here that I'm still waffling about. I can't put it in either of my Gen4 guns (34 and 35) because the parts don't interchange. Of the guns I can put it in, I'm not going to put it in my G19 carry gun because A) carry gun, and B) I don't know how well the Fulcrum trigger plays with the Gadget, although I suppose I could email Tom and ask. I'm probably not going to put it in either the G37 or the Robar'ed Gen2 17 because I might carry those. And I'm leery of putting it in either the 20 or the 32 because I don't know how those little set screws for takeup and overtravel would react to .357SIG/10mm recoil. What to do, what to do?


• It's weird how the same parts setup in one Glock can feel completely different in another one. Both my 37 and the old 17 have a ZEV connector and a NY1 trigger spring. The scale says both guns have a trigger that breaks right at seven pounds, but where that number feels high for the 37, you can feel every pound on the 17.


• What have I gotten myself into with the Special Snowflake Calibers? I need to sell an article to somebody.

Ugh.

Slow start this morning.

Meet the Press was decent, at least the last half of it I saw was.

The show, which has been All-Donald-All-The-Time for the last six months, focused today on the topic of "How did the GOP wind up nominating Donald Trump?" I have some ideas, Chuck; gimme a call.

Andrea Mitchell has her own camera these days, one with skin detail turned way down. It's like how every time Cybil Shepherd had a closeup in Moonlighting it looked like there was a quarter inch of vaseline smeared across the camera lens. They'd cut back and forth between her and the other panelists, who were all in the stark, surreal hypertextures of HDTV, and Andrea and the effect was almost jarring.

In other news, I had to provide some portrait photos for a magazine column and now I understand why we were seeing pictures of a flat-tummied, sideburned, patrol-cap-wearing Chuck Taylor in magazines well into the Aughties. And why Andrea gets her own camera.

Content, or at least some food or gun pictures, to follow.
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Look...

Just because H. habilis was several branches back on the family bush doesn't mean we're supposed to stop being handy.

I get not carrying a pistol. It's not for everybody and, if done with any level of seriousness, demands certain commitments and obligations that not everyone wants to undertake, and that's cool. It's still (mostly) a free country.

But how do you go through life without a flashlight and some kind of knife? Our most primitive ancestors carried sharp rocks around with them. Hell, carrying a sharpened rock around in case of future need is basically how we tell where the apes stop and the people start in our fossil family album. If they could have carried a light around without it burning their fingers or going out all the time, you bet they would have.

They make flashlights and knives small enough to accommodate any code, dress or legal, up with which you have to put.
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Chrono Wednesday Part II...

So, let's see what mild-shooting practice ammo in the Glock 32 looks like, shall we?

I brought a box of Speer Lawman 125gr TMJ with me to MCF&G to see what kind of numbers it would put up...

Not too shabby, as it turns out. Much tamer than full power defensive loads, by some 100fps, but at the same time it was hotter than any 124gr +P 9mm defensive load I fired out of the longer barreled M&P9 or Sig Sauer P320, sometimes by as much as 50-100fps.

Speer Lawman 125gr TMJ
LO: 1231
HI: 1292
AV: 1253
ES: 61.25
SD: 19.97

After the ten-round chrono string, I shot the rest of the box at the steel plates from twenty yards out.

I did have another failure-to-feed, with the round nosing into the bottom of the feed ramp, like the last range session. It was the third round from a full magazine, number thirteen of the day (#282 of the test). I'll note that the 32 uses the same magazine springs and recoil springs as the 9x19mm Glock 19. I'm beginning to think this is a bad idea.

Anyhow, that makes 319 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and two failures to feed (#221, #224, #282). 1,681 rounds left to go.
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Chrono Wednesday Part I...

The Steyr is waiting on ammo other than my stash of underpowered CCI 115gr Blazer Brass to continue building the round count, but that doesn't mean I can't do any shooting with it. I've got a large stash of partially-full boxes of stuff, and I figured I'd get some numbers off different loadings with the chrono.

I pulled some Sellier & Bellot 124gr FMJ and some Federal Tactical 147gr +P HSTs  out of the ammo can to test. Being the cautious sort, I loaded and fired ten rounds of the S&B to make sure I wasn't throwing good money after bad. They seemed to cycle the gun with adequate vigor, and so I set out to shoot a couple strings for the record.

Here are the results I got:

Sellier & Bellot 124gr FMJ
LO: 1054
HI: 1092
AV: 1073
ES: 38.46
SD: 11.18

Federal 147gr +P HST
LO: 960.4
HI: 993.2
AV: 979.8
ES: 32.79
SD: 12.76

Note that the S&B is traveling the same velocity, roughly, as the lighter 115gr Blazer Brass. It's still fairly mild shooting, being some 70fps slower than various 124gr Fiocchi or Winchester Q4318 "NATO" loads I've tried out of comparable test guns.

All thirty rounds fired without a hitch. A reader informed me that Steyr had changed the extractors in these, and so that's an issue I'm going to look into given the last range session's FTEs.

This makes 330 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with one failure-to-fire (#8), three failures to extract (#234, #266, #276), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,670 rounds left to go.
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Overheard in the Office...

RX: "Apparently there were over thirty attempts on Hitler's life? People say 'Why didn't they just kill the guy?'"

Me: "Yeah, but how many of those were Germans and how many were time travelers?"

Tab Clearing...

• Why You Aren't A Better Shooter


• Gun Maintenance by Sound Principles


• An Avalanche of CCW Fail

On the one hand and on the other...

Two hundred rounds of Speer Lawman .357SIG 125gr TMJ arrived from SGAmmo on Tuesday, and I took a hundred rounds of it to Indy Arms Co yesterday morning.

(For those unaware of the difference, an "FMJ" or "Full Metal Jacket" round usually has exposed lead on the base of the bullet. "TMJ" is Speer's trade terminology for "Total Metal Jacket"; the lead is entirely enclosed in a copper envelope. This removes a source of airborne lead. I will frequently just refer to these bullets as "FMJ" or "ball" in informal writing or conversation. Aspies and OCD sufferers will just have to deal.)

From a function standpoint, the round felt pretty Goldilocks; hot enough to cycle the gun with authority but not so hot that you felt the slide bottom out hard against the frame with each shot. On the other hand, I did have two incidents like the above photo during the range session, where the next round in line nosed down and caught the lower edge of the feed ramp. In both cases, slapping the magazine floorplate (the "tap" of "tap, rack, bang") was enough to send the slide forward into battery.

I'll take a box to MCF&G with a chrono here in the next day or two.

God I hate the sight picture on Glock factory sights. The instinct, especially if you've done a lot of shooting with three dot sights, is to line up the top edge of the dot with the top edges of the white verticals of the "cup" on the rear sight. This makes the top of the front sight blade sit proud of the notch. The correct sight picture is to have the dot centered in the cup, but the human brain doesn't automatically center small circles in 3/4-squares. Probably going to take a Sharpie or some black paint to that rear sight until I can beg, borrow, or buy some AmeriGlo CAPs .

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The factory Glock sights are like the stock photos that come in picture frames or the cardboard credit cards that come in a new wallet: Just there as a placeholder until you fill the sight notches with the real thing.

Anyhow, that makes 269 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126) and two failures to feed (#221, #224). 1,731 rounds left to go.
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Weird and disjointed dreams last night...

There was everything from running around shooting bad guys like a champion to walking through this fantastical downtown that was like if Tim Burton was hired to do the plagued streets of NYC in The Division.

Later, I joined Starfleet. Well, a starfleet. There were spaceships.

And then still later we were holed up in this clapped out chipboard sno-cone stand in the middle of post-apocalyptic suburbia, everybody trying to squeeze behind the freezer or the sno-cone machine while some dude on a hilltop across the road took potshots at anything he saw move through the open door.

It sure seemed like longer than seven hours. Dreams are weird.
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R.I.P. Pat Rogers...

 

I stepped off the range this morning to find the phone in my pocket buzzing with awful news...

Thank you, Pat. Thanks for all the teaching, the advice, and the kind words. The world's a better place for you having been in it.

"I'll shoot anybody I find in my house!"

Really?

"As an EMT I have responded to at least one call where a woman called 911 believing she was having a heart attack. We responded to the home and entered it and the husband was standing in the kitchen completely unaware that his wife had called for our services. If he’d been armed and under the premise that he would shoot any stranger who was in his home he would have shot the very people responding to his wife’s call for help."

Too many people get a gun and then look at it as some sort of universal problem-solving tool instead of a fairly narrow-focus bullet launcher.

Everybody expects it's going to be nazi zombie bikers come to rape their TV and steal their dogs. Nobody expects it's going to be the developmentally disabled adult child of the previous owners of your house coming "home" to make himself a sandwich. Further, there are places where you might be legally justified in shooting someone but, well, "Hey, it's okay, you didn't know he was a 70-y.o. Alzheimer's patient" probably doesn't help the Ambien work any better at 3:30 in the morning...

EDIT: This ties in with stuff talked about here, too.
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Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote...

April was a heck of a month. I was on the road for eighteen days, total. Flew out to New Hampshire, where I promptly got sick unto death and spent what was supposed to be a productive writing sojourn in secluded Castle Frostbite flat on my back with the creeping death.

I flew home in time to turn around and drive south to catch a ride out to Topeka for a weekend of gun school. Sunday after class, we grabbed dinner and loaded up the truck and headed back east.

It was long about just east of Evansville, in the wee hours of the AM, when I noticed that my blinks were occasionally getting very long. I looked over at Jack Clemons in the driver's seat and asked "Hey, are you cool?"

Jack pondered this with a level of concentration that was visible on his forehead. "No. I think we need to pull over for a nap." And so after a couple hours' shuteye in some restaurant parking lot at 0mygod30, we continued east.

I retrieved the Bimmer at 0800 and headed back west through Louisville rush hour traffic and then north to Indy, with my blinks starting to get long again about the time I hit I-465.

I arrived home staring down a double handful of deadlines for various writing chores and internet scutwork, plus this past weekend was one where Bobbi works the graveyard shift, and then there was the driving her to her mom's doctor's appointment on Monday. I would have slept yesterday away, but yesterday evening was the monthly meeting at MCF&G.

As I sat at the table, Dee, the club vice president, looked over and asked how I was doing. "I'm not even sure what day it is anymore," I replied.
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From Elsewhere...

At this point we're going to get a probably anti-gun president or a definitely anti-gun president.

What I'm trying to avoid is the constant losertalk of "OH MY GOD BURY YOUR GUNS AND BUY ALL THE PRIMERS" that I had to put up with in '08 and '12. We've beat this before and we'll beat it again. Now send some dough to the NRA-ILA, SAF, and GOA, then hop out of the wagon and help pull this thing.

Foregone Conclusion?

Sitting around the clubhouse after the monthly club meeting at MCF&G, the TV was on FOX59 with the volume off, when everybody noticed the news that Indiana was the state where the Cruz campaign went to die.

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A New Option...

Starting with the July issue, Shooting Illustrated will be an "Official Journal of the NRA". In other words, it will be one of your choices you can receive monthly as a bennie for being an NRA member.

"Why the changes? Until now, NRA has not had an Official Journal that exclusively covers guns, gear and the skills necessary for personal protection. We want to ensure this vital segment of our membership has a journal that reflects their interests. Since NRA already has such a publication in Shooting Illustrated, the decision to make it a member magazine was simple."

This is cool, because I'm partial to the magazine vis a vis the other choices on the slate, and not just because they publish me. At the risk of sounding like I'm toadying up to editor Ed Friedman, he's very aware of self-defense as a prime driver of new firearms sales, the popularity of the action shooting sports, and generally the whole "Gun Culture 2.0" thing, and the content of the magazine continues to gel in that direction. I'll be changing from America's First Freedom to SI immediately.
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Anticipation...

Back in the days when I had a favorite handgun cartridge, it was 10mm Auto, because I'm a gun hipster at heart and 10mm Auto is the gun hipster cartridge. (For autos, that is. In revolvers it's .41 Magnum.) It showed that you were a refined and studious sort, more knowledgeable and skilled than the range riffraff.

But if you went to a 10mm Auto fan club meet, how could you stand out from your fellow gun hipsters? With a 9x25 Dillon barrel, of course. 9x25 Dillon is a 10mm case necked down to take a 9mm bullet. Think of it as .357SIG in a 'roid rage.

I've had plans over the years to convert various guns to 9x25 Dillon: the G29 I used to carry, my stainless Delta Elite...I even sketched out a bubblegum pink STI 2011 carry gun. But it's taken me 'til now to actually pull the trigger and order a conversion barrel for a Glock 20.

I got home from helping Bobbi accompany her mom to a doctor's appointment to find the envelope from Lone Wolf Distributors in the mailbox. Stand by for silliness with chronos and jello blocks...
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It's okay, honey; they didn't mean you.

As more and more people exploit the special snowflake loophole to drag their livestock with them everywhere, even The New Yorker can't avoid taking notice:

"Are you going to ruin it for all of us?” one of my dog-fancying friends asked, when I told her that I was writing this article. I was surprised to learn how many of my acquaintances were the owners of so-called emotional-support animals. They defend the practice by saying that they don’t want to leave their pets home alone, or they don’t want to have to hire dog-walkers, or they don’t want their pets to have to ride in a plane’s cargo hold, or that Europeans gladly accept dogs everywhere. They have tricks to throw skeptics off guard. “People can’t ask about my disability,” one friend told me. “But if I feel that I’m in a situation where I might have a struggle being let in somewhere with my dog, then I come up with a disorder that sounds like a nightmare. I like to be creative. I’ll say I lack a crucial neurotransmitter that prevents me from processing anxiety and that, without the dog, I’m likely to black out and urinate.”

Nobody's the villain in their own narrative. As a matter of fact, in our participation ribbon culture, everybody's the star, and the petty rules and signs and placards and flight attendant announcements don't apply to them.

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A Snag...

Sunday morning at the range with the Steyr C9-A1 and one hundred rounds of CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ. I like the way the pistol handles, and I'm growing accustomed to the trigger, but I have to say that this was the point where the love affair was threatened by a string of failures to extract.

 Round #34 of the day (#234 of the test)

 Round #66 of the day (#266 of the test)

Round #76 of the day (#276 of the test)

I was uncomfortably reminded of Todd Green's Rule of Commonness: "Uncommon guns are uncommon for a reason."

I wish manufacturers would make up their mind where "3 Dot" sights are going to shoot. Some shoot to the dot, some shoot to the top of the front blade. The Steyr's three dot sights would appear to shoot to the top of the front blade at seven yards. The ninety rounds in the upper hit box were all fired holding the dot on roughly the bridge of the bad guy's nose. Also, since when did terrorists get such baller taste in guns? No ratty Kalashnikov clone for this guy; he has an FN SCAR!

This makes 300 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with one failure-to-fire (#8), three failures to extract (#234, #266, #276), and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,700 rounds left to go.
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Out like a lamb, my ass...

Oh, hey, those are tornado sirens!

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) May 2, 2016

pewpewpew

Yesterday I took a little Saturday morning range trip with the Steyr C9-A1. I dragged it and a hundred rounds of 9mm FMJ ammo to Indy Arms Company: fifty rounds of CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ and my last fifty rounds of Sig Sauer's Elite Performance 9mm 115gr FMJ, courtesy of Sig Sauer.

The pistol experienced a failure to go completely into battery with one round of CCI Blazer Brass, on round #16 of the day (#116 of the test.) All fifty rounds of Sig Sauer 115gr functioned without a hiccup.

While I was not chronoing anything, the Sig ammo was noticeably warmer than the tepid 115gr Blazer Brass. The latter barely dibbled out of the ejection port, where the former ejected forcefully through a narrow arc that ran from just over my right shoulder to right at the brim of my cap. Good argument for brimmed caps and eye pro.

This makes 200 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with one failure-to-fire (#8) and one failure to go completely into battery (#116). 1,800 rounds left to go.
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Does Not Work That Way

"Who are you voting for in the #IndianaPrimary?"
"The #LibertarianParty doesn't have a primary in IN."
"Yeah, but who are you voting for?"

— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) April 30, 2016

"Indiana" is not having a primary this week. The Indiana Democratic Party and the Indiana Republican Party are having primaries this week. I don't see why I have any more say in who they want their delegates to vote for than they do in what I want for dinner.
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Starting up the Steyr...

Since I ran the Glock 37 concurrently with the P250 and Canik and the Glock 19 concurrently with the P320 and PPX,  it makes sense (at least to me) to have a non-Glock test running alongside the Glock 32.

Some non-Glocks are more non-Glock than others, of course, and the Steyr C9-A1 was designed by a dude who'd previously done work for the Austrian 800lb gorilla. Legend has it that when they didn't want to incorporate some of his new ideas, he set out to make his own theme park, with blackjack and hookers get a gun produced by Steyr that incorporated them.

The Steyr M9 (and its smaller S9 and C9 offspring) could be thought of as one dude's vision of a Glock Mk.II.

Friday I brought the Steyr C9-A1 to MCF&G along with the Glock 32 in order to get a bit of chrono work done and fire some initial rounds on the steel in the bays...

The gun had been field-stripped and a drop of Lucas Extreme Duty Gun Oil added at all points indicated in the owner's manual.

I had a fifty-round box of CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ and a fifty-round box of Federal 9BPLE 115gr +P+ JHP.

Other than a light primer strike (that lit off on the second attempt) on round #8 of the day, the firearm went through the complete cycle of operation every time I pulled the trigger.

The slide release is so easy to reach with the strong side thumb, BTW, that it only locked open for me a couple times. It is very easy to ride the slide release if you shoot a thumbs-forward grip. Much easier than even with a Sig.

Velocities recorded are below (70°F, ~700ft ASL):

CCI Blazer Brass 115gr FMJ
LO: 1055
HI: 1121
AV: 1097
ES: 66.19
SD: 19.41

Federal 9BPLE 115gr +P+ JHP
LO: 1273
HI: 1307
AV: 1296
ES: 34.10
SD: 10.53

Notice how light those numbers are from the Blazer Brass? This is from that same lot that was so weak it wouldn't reliably run the Canik TP9v2. It ran the Steyr okay, but the ejection was a sight to behold, as the rounds dribbled weakly from the ejection port...

It did make it easy to wear out the steel at twenty yards with those mouse-fart loads and the Steyr's low bore axis, though. (Did I just say "low bore axis"? I feel dirty.)

This makes 100 rounds fired through the Steyr C9-A1 without cleaning or lubing, with one failure-to-fire (#8). 1,900 rounds left to go.
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Special Snowflake Glock Part Deux

G32 with seemingly ubiquitous PHLster and UpLULA

Went to MCF&G yesterday morning to do some chrono work in the pistol bays. This project was interrupted by the need to leave the range and get a fresh 9-volt for the chrono, but fortunately someone was shooting in the next bay over and agreed to keep an eye on my chrono setup while I ran down the road for a Duracell.

I brought along a twenty-round box of Hornady Critical Duty 135gr FlexLock and a fifty-round box of Winchester RA357B 125gr Ranger Bonded hollow points.

The gun still showed that it liked a strong grip, as the slide didn't trickle all the way back into battery after firing one of the Rangers. If this is a persistent problem, I'm going to talk to smarter people and see what they say about going to a stronger recoil spring.

Ballistics, in case you don't want to decipher my chicken scratch in the picture:

Hornady Critical Duty 135gr
LO: 1176
HI: 1202
AV: 1186
ES: 26.28
SD: 8.66

Winchester RA357SB 125gr Ranger Bonded
LO: 1308
HI: 1379
AV: 1348
ES: 71.00
SD: 23.49

Note that, once again, Hornady delivers amazingly consistent numbers. That 8.66fps Standard Deviation is match-grade in anybody's book. Interestingly, Winchester claims 1350fps for this load from a 4.00" test barrel, and I observed 1348 from a 4.00" gun. This was a novelty to me.

If anybody's still turned on by energy numbers, that's 422 foot-pounds for the Critical Duty and 504 for the Ranger.

So, that makes 169 total rounds fired with three failures to go completely into battery (#63, #78, #126). 1,831 rounds left to go.
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Overheard in the Office...

Me: "$%&# internet. %$&# people. I %$@&ing hate people. I wish they'd all go play in traffic and get hit by buses."

RX: "Wouldn't work. You'd need people to drive the buses."

Me: "After the first round, you get half the bus drivers to get out and get run over by the other bus drivers and then keep doing that until there's only one guy left, and I beat him to his knees with a lead pipe."

RX: "You'd never get them all that way. They'd be making new little drivers in the back of the buses faster than you could run them over."

Me: "Can I put this on the internet?"

RX: "Sure. There's your blog content for the morning problem solved."

Some Pointers for the Budding Arsenal

Kevin Creighton offers his views on the "Okay, I bought a CCW gun. What other guns do I need to buy?" question...
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That '90s Show...

Discovered these while rummaging around through boxes, looking for more .357SIG ammo...
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